Want to work on a significant conservation ecology project as an Honours or Masters student funded by Bush Heritage Australia?

Congratulations!! to Dr Ralph Trancoso who has been awarded the 2017 Ecohydrology Early Career Award for his paper “Regional variation in streamflow drivers across a continental climatic gradient” (Ecohydrology. 2017;10:e1816. https://doi.org/10.1002/eco.1816).

This is a significant award and it recognises Ralph's outstanding work as first author within 6 years of completing his PhD (2016).

Coral reefs and seagrass habitats are of great importance for local communities living close to them. They provide coastal protection, biodiversity, food resource and nursery ground. In comparison to terrestrial vegetation they are commonly submerged making them challenging to map due to varying water depth and water clarity.

The 2017 UQ Research Week awards was held earlier in the week, 13 Sept, at Customs House in Brisbane. Nine researchers, two research teams and six research supervisors were acknowledged across three categories – Foundation Research Excellence Awards (FREAs), Partners in Research Excellence Awards (PIREAs), and Awards for Excellence in Higher Degree by Research (HDR) Supervision. Among the winners was Professor Stuart Phinn for Excellence in HDR Supervision! A big congratulations to Stuart on a well deserved award! And it doesn't stop there....

Scientists observed the bleaching of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef early this year using satellite images. While capturing these events from space has been difficult in the past, Sentinel-2’s frequent revisits and its resolution makes it possible.

The corals of the Great Barrier Reef have now suffered two bleaching events in successive years. Experts are very concerned about the capacity for reef survival under the increased frequency of these global warming-induced events.

In a glimpse into the future of Australian crop mapping capability, scientists have released a map that conveys certain tree crops affected by cyclone Debbie to help with response and recovery efforts.

Environment and National Parks Minister Steven Miles joined reef citizen scientists from UniDive on Saturday, 25 March, who are doing an ecological survey of Flinders Reef near Moreton Island.

The Flinders Reef Ecological Assessment project is being coordinated and managed by UniDive and has been ongoing since June last year, and is due to conclude at the end of this year. The Queensland government has provided $5,000 in funding to UniDive to help train divers for this project.

We are looking for a candidate who will apply novel remote sensing techniques for large area – long time series data, as well as economics and social metrics, to detect abandoned and uncontested lands. Then look at prioritising uncontested lands for conservation based on estimates of ecological restoration and costs.

In December 2016 the Remote Sensing Research Centre was funded to continue in 2017 the development and implementation for a habitat mapping approach for the Great Barrier Reef, for which currently no detailed habitat maps exist. The work follows up on the initial work done in 2015-2016 in the Capricorn Bunker Group and both are funded through the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.